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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! > Front of House sound
Front of House sound
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SuperBee
5344 posts
Mar 26, 2018
11:00 PM
Ive never worried too much about FOH if its through a full PA with a paid operator. i run my amp onstage and if i can hear that and i like the sound i'm happy. if i have enough vocal in my monitor and can hear the rest of the band i can do my thing and i trust the PA operator to do their thing.
lately ive been using my 6x8" Sonny Jr and i like the sound i'm getting on stage. i assumed it must sound good out front. the stage managers have been miking it when we are on big stages.

just today i was sent some video of a set we played at a festival a few weeks ago.
the guitar sounded great. my vocals sounded better than i'd expected. the harp sounded thin, mid/toppy and weak. i was horrified!

i immediately considered whether it was just poor playing. i was really rattled. but then i thought, well i've heard other recordings and they don't sound like that. i wondered if it was a poor recording but no, the other elements all sound great.
so, i could have been having a bad day i suppose but i recall the sound on stage was fairly pleasing and i wasnt worried about the mix because that wasnt my business

so maybe an operator with no idea of what the harp should sound like? or is it because i'm not using the line out and only 1 speaker gets miked to the pa wheras im hearing the 6 speakers? would that matter?

Last Edited by SuperBee on Mar 26, 2018 11:01 PM
jbone
2524 posts
Mar 27, 2018
4:00 AM
I'm no pro but it seems logical that a single 8 being miced is going to sound a lot less bass-y than say a 12.
I had a Peavey Delta Blues 2x10 for a time. To me on stage it sounded good but more than one sound guy told me it sounded thin out front. I gave it all the bass I could and cut treb and gain. The few times I ran a 4x12 cab I got no complaints. It was a pain to lug around.

I believe LW had a 8x8 amp at some point but no idea if it was ever recorded. It would be nice if Adam would ring in here since he knows more about frequencies and such than I do.

My go to amp for years has been a 1x12 Princeton clone. Not much punch on a 4 piece stage usually but very adequate for the duo.
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kudzurunner
6458 posts
Mar 27, 2018
5:02 AM
Great subject for a thread.

The sub-par FOH sound that you heard could be caused by several things. For one thing, most--or at least many--sound guys put the mic dead center on the cone, rather than where it should be, which is about halfway between the center and the edge of the cone. That placement catches all the highs, all the crunch and edge, and loses all the fullness and lows. So I also make a point of adjusting mic placement. Often I'll ask the sound guy if he minds if I make a small adjustment or two. If the mic is dangling right on top of the speaker, then I place it roughly 30-40% of the distance from the cone to the edge. Not quite halfway, but definitely NOT right over the center. If the soundman is using stands, make the same adjustment. Trip Henderson taught me all this, which he'd learned from his stage and studio experience. You actually want to aim the mic so that it's roughly perpendicular to the speaker cone--the paper of the actual cone. In other words, you don't want it to be perpendicular to the amp front, you want to swivel it a bit, if possible (and if it's on a stand, it's possible) AWAY from the center of the cone. Really good soundmen know this. Most soundmen don't know it. They've got a brutalist, one-size-fits-all approach. But the good ones know it, and when THOSE guys mic my amps, and correctly, I'm always pleased, and I don't touch a thing.

Some sound guys are so bad that they never bother to check where the speaker on my Kay 903 is. It's displaced to the side. Many times they mike the wood, not the speaker. They could simply have felt the fabric and found the speaker-hole, but it never occurs to them to do this. So I discreetly move the mic so that it's actually in the vicinity of the speaker, rather than miking the piece of wood next to the speaker. Soundmen can be idiots, frankly. It's your job to know that and make sure that their idiocy doesn't negatively impact the sound you're delivering to the audience.

Anyway, that one tweak regarding mic placement will make a big difference.

A second tweak is bringing your own mic and asking the sound guy to use it. A lot of sound guys use an SM57 for general amp miking purposes. It's not a bad mic, but it's hot and in my experience it again reinforces all the hot crunchy stuff. Combine that mic with sub-optimal placement and you get...well, what happened to you. You'll cut through the band, sure enough, but at a cost. (An SM57 would be ideal, I suppose, in a situation where you were using an amp with 1x15. In that case, you'd want to bring out the highs.)

I've had Sennheiser e906 mics for a few years now, and they help solve the problem you had. They can't be peaked, they'll take whatever you throw at them, and, most importantly, they reinforce the bottom end and smooth things out, which is exactly what 8" speakers need. My problems with miking amps--small amps--stopped the moment I bought those mics. There's an e609 that's a little cheaper and it works well, too. But get a 906, and tweak mic placement. You'll be amazed.

Also, and obviously, get out front during line check or sound check and get a listen to your amp on-axis: your ears in line with the cone centers. You may be surprised by how much treble you hear. I always am. The surest way to get a great sound is to put yourself in the actual seats of the people who are listening to you. When I play in a restaurant or club, I always come out front during sound check and sit in a front seat, and play. Then tweak.


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Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition

Last Edited by kudzurunner on Mar 27, 2018 6:39 AM
SuperBee
5345 posts
Mar 27, 2018
5:31 AM
Thanks for the advice.
Yes,quite possible that mic was centred and it was a 57.
Bit difficult to get out front though as we were a good 5’ off the ground and foh stacks would be further away than my lead would reach. I do try to get out when I can. Our guitarist plays wireless and will go wandering early to check if we are responsible for our own mix.
The Iceman
3517 posts
Mar 27, 2018
7:07 AM
FOH sound is always subject to the philosophy of the sound man....for instance, when we did a gig at HOB in Orlando, their sound men were Rock and Rollers, so they were doing stuff like taking the acoustic bass feed from Cassandra Wilson's bass player and BLASTING it out front, because Rock and Roll BLASTS the bass and kick drum. However, Cassandra is NOT a rock and roll band, so the result was totally lopsided and out of proportion.

This is one reason I was championing the (at the time) new concept from BOSE in which, in using their equipment, the sound you hear on the stage is the exact same mix the audience hears, putting the control back in the hands of the musicians.
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The Iceman
Little roger
212 posts
Mar 27, 2018
7:19 AM
The guys on the board are often useless. And deaf if you are the last act up at a festival.

Re miking- I am a huge fan of this system:

https://www.integral.uk.com

It stops the sound engineers from screwing everything up and it always sounds great. It also enables you to get to the amp more easily. I have two - one in each of my two main amps. Highly recommended. Unfortunately they only make a 10 and 12" version so far.
barbequebob
3493 posts
Mar 27, 2018
8:24 AM
One also has to bear in mind one thing many of you often overlook and that's room and stage acoustics and somethings just can't be completely ironed out even with the best of sound people and there are times nothing can really be done about it.
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Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
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SuperBee
5347 posts
Mar 28, 2018
2:26 PM
I actually heard the MC say later in the day
“What’s a blues festival without a rock and roll band?”

The blasting bass and kick was very evident the Friday night when I was listening to Phil Emmanuel, Tim Gaze and Kevin Borich
We kicked off the Saturday program. Our job was to make people aware the program was running and get them out of their tents, and over to the festival field, get their hangovers settled with some food etc, ready for the acts they’d come to see. We won our spot through a talent search competition; the stage crew had managed us on another festival back on New Year’s Day but I think a different crew on FOH.
The point being quite likely no one knew what the harp was supposed to sound like and care factor may have been low.
It was suggested elsewhere that I should ‘give the cab some air’ by which the fellow meant place the mic some distance from the speaker, maybe 8”, and aim at the rim.
This weekend is likely our last 2 gigs for the season. We are running our own PA on one of them and at this stage plan to record that gig via the desk. I’ll run some experiments as we prepare for that gig. It’s a private venue and we have access for a long time prior to the gig. So I’ll mess with mics and the line out. We do have a 906 so I can check that out vs a 57 also.

Last Edited by SuperBee on Mar 28, 2018 2:28 PM
Barley Nectar
1352 posts
Mar 28, 2018
3:59 PM
Well Supe, I think you nailed it. Outside gig, micing one dinky speaker....Thin FOH sound. I saw a show where the feature harp player miced up small amps. His guitar guy buried him half way back the room. The harp was lost in the mix of 2 and a little drum. I was not the only musician that noticed it. Adam did put on a fine show though and it is a tough room sound wise. No paridice on earth...
Prento
35 posts
Mar 28, 2018
11:48 PM
Super, I think part of the problem with sound guys here in Oz is that they just don't understand harp. Unless you are talking about a big name player who can dictate to the sound guys what they want, you are at their mercy and they won't want you getting in the way of the guitars. We did a recording for a demo one time in a studio. The studio owner, a mate of ours is a guitarist. I had a good sound through my old AWA amp but on the recording it was compressed beyond recognition, he just didn't understand. Our blues scene is so small in comparison to the rock thing so it is rare to get blues musos behind a desk.
LSC
776 posts
Apr 21, 2018
11:43 AM
Further to this thread, the sound guys I work with around here are pretty knowledgeable when it comes to micing harmonica amps. That being said, I'm about to throw 8x8" at them. What would be the best mic placement in that situation?
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LSC
SuperBee
5383 posts
Apr 21, 2018
4:24 PM
I dunno. I’m still guessing. We tried the line out from the SJ2 and that was better by a long margin over what I heard from the miked single speaker, but I didn’t get to play around with different miking arrangements as I’d hoped.
Using the line out did mean I didn’t need a short mic stand to add to stage Clutter. We had a deep but not so wide stage
I’ll say that while the line out was quite good, it isn’t the same as the sound I get on stage from the cab. Hearing the cab do it’s thing with all 6 8” speakers at once seems quite different and better somehow.
I love the SJ2 stage sound and in a venue where it can get across without help, and from now on I expect I’ll use the line out if I need FOH reinforcement.
What I haven’t tried is the suggestion of ‘giving it some air’; standing the mic 8” or so back from the speaker in an effort to catch more of the cab rather than focusing tightly on one speaker. I can see potential problems with that approach but I will try it if I get a chance.

I dunno though. People mic up 8” cabs all the time with small amps and doesn’t seem to necessarily be a problem from what I’ve heard. I mean, there are certainly some good-sounding recordings of miked 8” cabs.


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